Thiruvananthapuram: A police officer accused of torturing Sales Tax attendant S R Sunish Kumar walked away with the President’s award for meritorious service while the victim has ended up, further victimized by an insensitive administration for more than a decade.
Sunish Kumar, 42, unmarried and hailing from Malayinkeezhu, has been shifting his residence, fearing the midnight knock. He is partially blind in the left eye and suffers from musculoskeletal trauma, inflicted by the keepers of law.
CBCID SP K S Sreekumar, among officers facing prosecution on the torture complaint filed by Sunish Kumar, managed to get the President’s award in 2011 even after he was summoned by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Kattakada, on December 3, 2010.
Sunish, the victim, complained to the President, Governor, Home Minister and Home Secretary on August 22, 2011 about the President’s award.
IG (HQ) Manoj Abraham says in his report that “serious lapse occurred on the part of the recommending authority” regarding the probe into Sunish’s complaint on the suppression of the court case.
It all started with Sunish, a CPM sympathizer, and friends at Malayinkeezhu blocking SI B Vinod as he tried to leave after his vehicle knocked down two bikers on August 19, 2001. Four days later Vinod and party allegedly assaulted Sunish. He was injured in the left eye, was in hospital for 32 days, out of which 28 days in remand.
Between this incident and another brutal attack on December 26, 2009, when his ribs were broken in custody, Sunish has been on the run, threatened, intimidated, set up in cases at different police stations and even mugged.
Sunish would still be a dubious character, as made out by the police, had it not been for a lady magistrate, who saw his plight and ordered that the police officers, who sought his remand, be booked for torture in 2009.
Sunish’s efforts to catch up with his tormentors started showing results when the Home Department in 2009 gave him sanction to prosecute B Vinod, former SI, Malayinkeezhu, K S Sreekumar, former CI Kattakada and constables Sasi and Padmakumar.
Later, based on Sunish’s mother’s complaint, the Assembly Petitions Committee gathered evidence from him in November 2012. But the Government is yet to respond.
“I only request that the State help me in bringing the violators to book and ensure due damages for my mental and physical agony all these years”, summed up Sunish.
